The Sticklepath Strangler

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Most interesting, Parson, but I have work to be getting on with. You may not have noticed, but we foresters have duties to attend to, and we tend to be at them more regularly than some.’

  ‘You insult me in my own chapel, you devil? Be gone at once! You suggest that I am drunk? If I am, whose fault is it, eh?’ Gervase’s voice rose in anger. ‘You forget who caused me to fall? Who made me what I am today, eh? You. You used me, and you made me a monster. You alone.’

  Drogo stood and gave an elaborate yawn. ‘So we are back to that, are we? Well, you have been blaming me for many a long year, and I doubt not that you’ll continue to do so, even though it wasn’t me but Samson.’

  ‘You’d blame the misguided fool now he lies in his own grave? Hypocrite!’

  ‘It was Samson started the attack on Athelhard.’

  ‘You were there, you with your men, and you should have prevented it. You are a King’s man, Forester, and you failed to stop the murder.’

  ‘Gervey, it was your preaching that caused the vill to kill him. Don’t forget your own guilt.’

  ‘At least I tried to persuade people out of their crime!’ Gervase spat.

  ‘Yes. Still, it’d be better not to mention it to the coroner or his friends. Secrets like that are better kept hidden.’

  ‘You come here to protect yourself?’

  ‘What I have told you was under the seal of the confessional. You broke your vows once, you wouldn’t want to do it again, would you?’

  ‘You are worse than a blasphemer, you are a heretic as well.’

  ‘Ah, Christ’s blood, man! Do you honestly think you can blame me for that? Athelhard died because of your words, not mine, so don’t try to put the blame onto me.’

  ‘I know.’ Gervase felt his rage dissolve, washed away by his guilt. It was true – it was his fault Athelhard had died. ‘I preached against him and fired the men here with hatred. I guaranteed his death. I sealed his death warrant and provided the rope.’

  ‘If you want to wallow in it, carry on. I have better things to be doing,’ Drogo said dismissively as he walked to the door. When he had pulled it open, he glanced back at Gervase. ‘You know, I would not have you taking all the responsibility for Athelhard’s death. He was a hard man, and he died a hard man’s way. But it wasn’t you alone. We all knew he was guilty.’

  ‘But he wasn’t, was he? He was innocent.’

  ‘He was foreign. It’s no surprise we thought it must be him. Who else could it have been? Poor Denise. She was such a pretty little maid. And then we found her… like that. Who else could have done it?’

  ‘Who else could have eaten her, you mean?’

  ‘If you must have it so, yes. Athelhard was well fed, and Meg described the meal he gave her.’

  ‘She told me he had bought it from a traveller. A joint of pork.’

  ‘No one saw this meat. It’s no surprise all thought he killed Denise to feed himself and his sister.’

  His defensive tone of voice made Gervase sneer. ‘Oh yes, and then it was but a short step to thinking him a vampire!’

  ‘It was your preaching did that.’

  ‘I know,’ Gervase said desperately. ‘I didn’t think what I was saying.’

  ‘What does it matter? A man who can eat others has to be possessed.’

  Gervase brought his fist down on the altar. ‘But he didn’t do it, did he? That’s the whole point!’

  ‘We don’t know that for certain,’ Drogo said uneasily.

  ‘Oh no? Not even when we found the body of Mary two months after Athelhard had been slaughtered outside his home?’

  ‘You were partly to blame for Athelhard’s death. Don’t put all the responsibility onto me, priest.’

  ‘And Aline, too.’ The priest’s bleary eyes turned back to the altar for a moment. ‘Why was she buried?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Aline was buried. Why was that? The others were left out in the open.’

  ‘Who can tell? Maybe the killer wanted to punish her father. Or her,’ Drogo said.

  ‘And Mary and Aline both died after Athelhard. So he couldn’t have been the murderer.’

  ‘You think what you like, Gervey. For me, I think he was desperate and sought anything to eat. He killed and ate Denise all right. Local men would have begged food from their neighbours, but a stranger like him? He couldn’t. It was only to save his sister’s feelings that he told her it was pork.’

  Gervase snapped, ‘And I suppose he returned from the grave to eat Mary? And Aline too?’

  ‘If he was a vampire…’

  ‘Oh, but you saw to that, didn’t you? You let Peter cut out his heart and throw it into the flames. No vampire could return after that.’

  ‘Then maybe we released the demon and it infested another man?’ Drogo said with a chilly horror.

  ‘Or it was never him in the first place!’ Gervase shrieked.

  Drogo sighed heavily. ‘Christ, I’ve had enough of this. You carry on blaming yourself if you want, but I have work to be getting on with,’ he said, drawing the door wide and striding outside.

  Fool of a priest! He was close to shitting himself with righteous indignation every time they spoke, seeking to offload a little of his guilt on someone else. Thank God he hadn’t questioned Drogo’s presence in the chapel. The forester didn’t want to have to admit that he was there to ask for forgiveness. To beg for understanding. It wasn’t that he hated the girls – he might be jealous of the parents, but he didn’t hate the girls. Still, God knew his feelings.

  Drogo could remember the day of Athelhard’s death. Doubted he’d ever be able to forget it. That morning at Mass, Gervase had begged them to pray for the dead girl, weeping at the altar as he told the congregation about Denise.

  Not that there were dramatic demonstrations of grief at the time, apart from the parson’s. Even the girl’s father was too far gone for grief. Peter atte Moor was white-faced, with the tears streaming down his face, and Drogo had been moved to put his hand on his man’s arm in a mute expression of sympathy. Exhausted, Peter was too hungry to cry properly.

  That was the point. Everyone in the vill was starving. The children’s faces were shrunken and distorted, their eyes tearful and pleading. The famine had struck the year before, due to the rain, the accursed rain that still fell outside even as Gervase held his hands aloft and begged Him to help them, to save them all from death. But He was too busy.

  It was difficult to remember exactly when the congregation had realised who was guilty. The parson wasn’t happy about it at first, but he knew, just as they all did, that no local man could have done this terrible thing, cutting up Denise like a side of pork. Not even one of the folk from South Zeal would have done that. They were weird up there, but not to that extent. No, it had to be a stranger.

  They had gone up to the edge of Sticklepath, all the men of the vill, the hunters with their bows, the peasants with their billhooks and staffs, and there, at Athelhard’s property, they had stalked and killed him.

  Drogo was by the graveyard now. Samson’s dogs were howling, over in the kennels at the far side of the cemetery. They were loyal hounds. He could hear nothing over their racket, was unaware of the low moaning that shivered on the breeze. Deep in his thoughts, he was aware only of a chill, a melancholy which affected even him, and he resolutely jerked his shoulders to ease the stiffness as he made his way home.

  There was nothing, he told himself. Nothing.

  * * *

  Simon entered the inn with relief. He hesitated in the screens to catch his breath, but as he felt his heartbeat return to normal, he began to rationalise what had happened to him.

  It was the effect of the mist on the moor, that was why he was so jumpy. If there had been a ghost, he would have seen something. Apparitions appeared. It wasn’t logical to worry about a sound.

  Logical! Logic was a word Simon had grown to detest when he was schooled by the canons at Crediton. They taught him philosophy, grammar and logic, or tried t
o, but Simon, who could pick up and comprehend Latin easily, who could write and read with facility, found logic impossible. It was partly this that persuaded him he had no vocation for the priesthood. Not that he minded. He was happy to aim at becoming the steward to his Lord Hugh de Courtenay, as his father had been.

  Baldwin would treat any suggestion that there had been a ghost crying to him with amused contempt, and Simon wasn’t prepared to leave himself open to an accusation of credulity. Instead he took a deep breath, then walked into the inn.

  Coroner Roger glanced up as he entered. ‘Good Christ, man, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost!’

  ‘No!’ Simon said, perhaps a little louder and more emphatically than was necessary, for several people in the room looked up. He repeated his denial more quietly. ‘No, but I feel in sore need of a pint of wine. Is the taverner about?’

  ‘His daughter is,’ Coroner Roger said, and bellowed, ‘Martha! Baldwin’s with Jeanne and they’ll be coming here for some supper. God knows what the cook will produce, but I suppose needs must…’

  ‘Did you have any luck in South Zeal?’ Simon asked, taking a large pot.

  ‘No. No one there knows anything. The lot of them could have had their tongues ripped out and it wouldn’t have made a difference,’ the coroner said gloomily. ‘What I am supposed to do when confronted with useless, silent halfwits, I do not know.’

  ‘You are supposed to continue questioning them, Coroner,’ Baldwin said, entering with Jeanne. He grinned at Roger, then gave Simon a speculative glance. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit pale.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Simon said, moving to make space for Jeanne. ‘How are you, my Lady?’

  She smiled at his enquiry. ‘I am well. This is a terribly depressing place, though.’

  ‘The whole vill is silent. Someone must know something,’ Baldwin said. ‘I cannot believe that every peasant here is determined to hold his tongue out of fear of our rank, yet they are resolute in their dumbness.’

  ‘It is almost as though the whole vill shares in a secret,’ Jeanne said.

  ‘Maybe they’ve moved a parish boundary and fear someone will notice,’ Simon scoffed.

  Baldwin mused. ‘The messenger’s suggestion of cannibalism was an embarrassment to the reeve. Also, the reeve had little choice in sending for the coroner, do not forget, because Miles Houndestail was with the two girls when Aline’s body was discovered. What if other deaths were not reported and the whole vill knew? Surely everyone would keep silent on the matter. Just as they are.’

  ‘You suggest that there might be more dead?’ Coroner Roger said, appalled.

  ‘There could be another reason for their silence,’ Simon suggested.

  ‘Name it!’

  ‘You don’t believe in them, but what if the people thought that there was a vampire?’

  ‘Oh, so we are back to vampires!’ Baldwin scoffed.

  ‘You don’t believe in ghosts?’ the coroner asked.

  Baldwin considered. ‘Demons can certainly reinvigorate a dead body. That is why the dead must be protected, so that demons do not take corpses and animate them to scare people, but I find stories of vicious ghosts persecuting an area entirely unbelievable.’

  ‘The dead can return,’ Jeanne said quietly. ‘I remember many stories from when I lived in France.’

  ‘Come, Baldwin,’ Simon said. ‘Put aside your prejudice for a moment and look at it from the perspective of the people here. If they feared a vampire, they would surely hide the fact. They might even seek to conceal his victims, from shame.’

  ‘True enough,’ Baldwin agreed.

  ‘And they would have attacked any man who they thought could have been the vampire!’ Jeanne declared.

  ‘You mean the purveyor?’ Baldwin asked. ‘I think he died some time before the girls.’

  Simon stared at Jeanne. ‘But what if there was someone else, someone they thought was the vampire, and they killed him?’

  Jeanne nodded. ‘And then they realised it couldn’t have been him. That would be a secret worth keeping.’

  Baldwin was non-committal. ‘Perhaps. It makes more sense than a real vampire, anyway. Yet even as he spoke, he saw in his mind’s eye that figure of his nightmare, the figure at the tree, and he shuddered. This vill was making even him become superstitious. He thrust the thought aside as Jeanne spoke.’

  ‘Are you all right, Simon?’ Jeanne asked.

  Simon looked at her, but he thought that at the edge of his hearing he could pick up that curious, low moan once more. ‘I… I don’t know.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Long after Drogo had gone, Gervase tidied up the altar and swept the floor. At the door, he bowed, making the sign of the cross, and then changed his mind, walking to the altar and praying for strength. Drogo’s words had reminded him that he was not solely guilty. ‘If You would help me, Lord God, I could become a sober, useful priest again,’ he begged.

  Later, pulling the door shut behind him, he noticed that the cross in the cemetery was damaged. His first test, he thought. He stepped over the low mounds where bodies had been laid to rest, and touched the cross member gingerly. Only four years ago he had paid a carpenter to make this, and already the wood was rotten. The churl must have knocked it up from any old stuff. He would get a piece of Gervase’s mind next time they met. In the meantime he would have to get a new one made.

  The hounds were still howling. It was a miserable sound, as though dead souls were calling to the living, desperate to rejoin their families and friends, he thought. Strange that an animal could form so close an attachment to his owner, but oddly comforting, too. Even a man like Samson, a fellow universally disliked, was mourned by his own creatures.

  A breeze passed over the tree tops and Gervase shivered. His robes felt thin. Perhaps it was his age, he thought. He never felt warm these days; even his spiced wine failed to remove the chill from his bones.

  He was about to walk to the gateway once more when there was a pause in the howling and he heard a low, coughing moan. He spun sharply on his heel, but there was no one there. Frowning, he peered into the murk, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  At the low groaning he made the sign of the cross once more, murmuring a Pater Noster to give himself courage. Stiffening his resolve, he stepped forward boldly. ‘Drogo, is that you?’ he demanded.

  The only answer was a sobbing wail which seemed to come from the earth at his very feet.

  Uttering a choking cry, the parson leaped back and, looking down, he saw he was standing on Samson’s grave. A breeze caught at the cross, and it squeaked and groaned, and Gervase gave a great sigh of relief: it was only the cross. For a moment he had believed that a ghost was with him.

  All was well. He walked from the cemetery along the roadway past the puddle. As he went, he saw Drogo. The forester was up near the spring, watching the priest. At his side were Peter and Vincent, the latter with his air of faintly baffled seriousness which always reminded Gervase of a hound which had lost a scent, and Peter, looking joyless, as he had ever since the day they had found his daughter.

  Gervase nodded to them, but Drogo and Peter made no response. It was as though he was too insignificant to merit acknowledgement. Vin lifted an apathetic hand, but allowed it to fall, and Gervase licked his lips nervously. He felt threatened by their grim features and silence.

  He was glad to reach his little cottage and be able to pull the door to, shutting out their unsettling expressions.

  * * *

  Felicia could hear her mother muttering to herself, and the noise was disconcerting.

  Samson had been a terrifying presence in the house, and both women had avoided him when they could, for otherwise they would earn a stripe or two from his rope-end, and Felicia couldn’t count the number of times she had prayed that he would die, that he would leave them to have some sort of life of their own without having to pander to his whims and fancies. And then he tumbled through the window and was struck about the head
by the wheel and their lives were changed.

  Felicia found a fresh confidence, a sudden inrush as though she had drunk a gallon of wine. It was heady stuff, knowing that she need never fear being woken in the night by his rough hands forcing her thighs apart, that she could select a husband for herself, that she could choose to remain celibate, that she could join the nunnery if she wished. She need not take her father’s views and prejudices into account.

  The same was not true of Gunilda. She had been married to Samson for so many years that life without him was alarming. Samson had dealt with all the family finances, he had arranged for the deliveries of grain, he had kept the machinery working. Gunilda couldn’t conceive of life without him. It was like trying to imagine life without air or fire or water.

  He had been a lowering, grim old demon at the best of times, but he was solid and inflexible, something upon which Gunilda could depend. And now this firm, rocklike being was gone. With it she felt her life was also gone.

  Felicia could vaguely comprehend this. The destruction of what had been to her a gaol, was to her mother the loss of a protective institution that shielded her from all risk or danger other than those represented by Samson. His brutality became for Gunilda a kind of certainty. Like a hound, she craved even a cruel master so long as there was someone for her to respect.

  That might be good enough for her mother, but Felicia wanted more. She wanted her own husband, her own life, and now there was a possibility of both, she found herself growing irritable with the other woman. Gunilda should be sharing in her fierce joy, not whining like a beaten dog.

  The knock on the door was a relief. Felicia went and peered through a crack in the badly fitted timbers. She felt her face go blank for a moment in surprise, then pulled the beam from the door and opened it.

  ‘Vin? What do you want at this time of night?’

  He tried to answer, but he was tongue-tied. Redfaced, he stammered that he was passing and wanted to see how she was.